Energy & Connection
The Power that Feeds the Soul
Connection is a somatic experience, one that is felt within the body, the heart, and our minds. The science behind this shows the effects positive and negative experiences have on our nervous system and the way in which the energy of flight, fight, freeze or rest travels through our heart, our gut, and our brains.
Emerging science reveals that working with your horse’s energy naturally aligns and synchronizes our nervous systems, creating feelings of calm, connection, and safety for both.
During this process endorphins are released, creating feelings of ease, clarity, and over-all well-being for both horses and people.
Understanding the science helps guide us to ways in which we can intentionally, purposefully, and mindfully engage with our internal energy, our life force, our chi. This is how we can begin creating and nurturing deep and powerful connections with horses and on so many levels.
The benefits of working with our energy and our horse’s energy are many. Connecting with our horses in this way benefits the following:
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Creates the deepest connections and on many levels: emotional, mental, cellular, chemical, and physical
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Creates feelings of ease, peace, clarity, and well-being
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Develops connection, communication, and consensual work together
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Releases stress and tension and replaces it with calm and relaxation
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Creates energetic space for both horses and humans to connect and heal each other
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Creates emotional agility and self-regulation
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Removes all behavioral issues and stressors
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Teaches the body how to move with ease, fluidity, and balance
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And so much more!
There are three ways in which we can use our internal life force, our chi energy to connect to others including our horse’s energy: Energy Work, Chakra Work and Somatic Experiencing.
I teach all three in my MasteryMembership Riding Foundation Program. When combined they work the best when it comes to connecting deeply, developing horses, and healing and restoring horses and humans.
Energy Work. Energy work is a traditional healing system that restores the balance and flow of energy throughout the body, mind, and soul. This technique works directly with the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of well-being.
It addresses the illness caused due to disturbance of the energy flow in the body. It is believed that when the energy flow gets fixed, the person automatically gets cured. There are different types of energy healing techniques, which work differently to heal a person: Reiki, Pranic, Crystal, Quantum, and QiGong.
Chakra Work. Chakra translates to "wheel" in Sanskrit, and you can imagine them like wheels of free-flowing positive energy.
There are seven main chakra energy points in your body. They are thought to be spinning disks of energy that should stay “open” and aligned, as they correspond to bundles of nerves, major organs, and areas of our energetic body that affect our emotional and physical well-being.
The seven chakras are the main energy centers of the body. You've probably heard people talk about "unblocking" their chakras, which refers to the idea that when all our chakras are open, energy can run through them freely, and harmony exists between the physical body, mind, and spirit.
A blocked chakra means your energy, or your horse’s energy, is stuck in that chakra. Blocked chakras affect our, and our horse’s, emotional and physical well-being. To understand what this means, we will have to learn about the seven chakra’s, their individual qualities, and our strengths and weaknesses associated with each.
Somatic Experiencing. Somatic Experiencing aims to restore the body’s ability to self-regulate to achieve balance and integrity.
It was developed by Peter A. Levine, PhD to address the effects of trauma. Levine developed this approach after observing that prey animals, whose lives are routinely threatened in the wild, can recover readily by physically releasing the energy they accumulate during stressful events.
On the other hand, humans along with unhappy animals, often override these natural ways of regulating the nervous system with feelings of shame and pervasive thoughts, judgments, anxiety, and fears.
Somatic Experiencing aims to help people, and animals, move past the place where they might be “stuck” in processing a traumatic event.
The autonomic nervous system (ANS), which includes the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), the parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS), and the enteric nervous system (ENS), is triggered into action when we’re faced with adversity and it governs the fight, flight, or freeze instinct.
Although designed to be self-regulating, the ANS can become dysregulated, particularly when full expression of one’s response to trauma is repressed. As a result, the body continues to respond as if it is under threat.
Somatic experiencing contends that negative symptoms of trauma—such as anxiety, hypervigilance, aggression, and shame—result from denying the body the opportunity to fully process the traumatic event.
Often, we must recreate the feelings of the trauma to learn how to work through the trauma and let go of the trauma. This is a very delicate and specialized area that is often misunderstood and treated with harsh and submissive tactics such as desensitizing and learned helplessness.
Though many people, and horses, who experience traumatic events recover completely, for those who do not, unresolved trauma can lead to larger mental and physical health concerns, such as posttraumatic stress (PTSD), sleep problems, mood swings, displacement behaviors, anxiety, depression and auto-immune issues.